Asian Hornet APP

[rdartington]

And this post demonstrates the naivety of your knowledge as;

a) using FC approach requires deliberate release of non native species if formulated into an official treatment - see #340
b) Fipronil when formulated into the custard needs to be used immediately as is inactivated in the presence of the egg protein, leading to a rapid half life and therefore no activity after nest destruction.
c) to get Fipronil licensed as a formulation than can be mixed just prior to dosing isnt going to happen. its not the responsibility of DEFRA, NBU, VMD or one of the other government agencies. Its down to dirty capitalist's who only do the research and a license application if there is money to made. Ultimately this is the harsh reality for all medicines developed and licensed. No return on investment for FC, I'm afraid.

Only way FC is going to be used against AH is for individuals to do it, when its appropriate to do so. As soon as some starts boasting about using this treatment on social media, I can see them being made an example of by NBU / VMD

This has been a very informative discussion - thanks to all.
Using traps to discover when AH are local to you , then calling in NBU to track down and finally inject insecticide into a nest high in a tree seems a very heavyweight process which is also dependent on NBU having enough inspectors to deal with all calls, however many are made as HB become more numerous.
So why is FC not being followed up ? It is a potent poison, so use/storage could be restricted to say one beekeeper in each beekeeping association who has been trained up by NBU - and later to assistants trained up by the first.
Why bother? Because use of FC is so simple - you just put out a bait dish where a trap has caught a AH. Then paint the visiting AH while it feeds. Then the AH finds its way back to the nest with no need for beekeepers to track down where the nest is.
Or have I missed something?

 

[Karol]

This has been a very informative discussion - thanks to all.
Using traps to discover when AH are local to you , then calling in NBU to track down and finally inject insecticide into a nest high in a tree seems a very heavyweight process which is also dependent on NBU having enough inspectors to deal with all calls, however many are made as HB become more numerous.
So why is FC not being followed up ? It is a potent poison, so use/storage could be restricted to say one beekeeper in each beekeeping association who has been trained up by NBU - and later to assistants trained up by the first.
Why bother? Because use of FC is so simple - you just put out a bait dish where a trap has caught a AH. Then paint the visiting AH while it feeds. Then the AH finds its way back to the nest with no need for beekeepers to track down where the nest is.
Or have I missed something?

Yes you have. Velutina is not established in the UK so there is no justification to use FC. Far better to get the NBU involved because apart from nest eradication they also play a pivotal role in monitoring and field intelligence. FC is not fool proof. It takes skill, knowledge and experience. Get it wrong at this stage and you kill the vectors not the queen. This risks the colony surviving and potentially producing sexuals. Far safer to have the NBU certify and examine a kill than chance to fortune.

FC comes into its own when there is an established infestation because the risk of failure to benefit ratio becomes heavily weighted in FC's favour. With an established infestation there's no down side to failure because there are so many hornets you have time to perfect the preparation of the FC mixture and the application technique. FC is very much a keep in your back pocket tool only to be taken out when absolutely necessary which is not now (unless you live in mainland western Europe).

 

[user 819]

Just a little tip. You might have to twist the wicks together to give you a better capillary action if you find that they remain too dry in use. Otherwise spot on.

Tips are welcome , they will help all.

 

[rdartington]

Yes you have. Velutina is not established in the UK so there is no justification to use FC. Far better to get the NBU involved because apart from nest eradication they also play a pivotal role in monitoring and field intelligence. FC is not fool proof. It takes skill, knowledge and experience. Get it wrong at this stage and you kill the vectors not the queen. This risks the colony surviving and potentially producing sexuals. Far safer to have the NBU certify and examine a kill than chance to fortune.

FC comes into its own when there is an established infestation because the risk of failure to benefit ratio becomes heavily weighted in FC's favour. With an established infestation there's no down side to failure because there are so many hornets you have time to perfect the preparation of the FC mixture and the application technique. FC is very much a keep in your back pocket tool only to be taken out when absolutely necessary which is not now (unless you live in mainland western Europe).

Thanks for this clarification.
As I now understand, for rechecking before I pass on to my association members:
Nest detection by NBU and total killing by injection of an insecticide wand is best as ensures total destruction.
But detection takes time and NBU has only a limited number of inspectors (?).
The number of nests requiring detection in 2024 is unknown(?). If all nests were detected in 2023, then nil until more queens blow in from France or are ferried in. Nests increased from 20+ to 70+ from 2022 to 2023 - threefold - if that rate of increase continues then expect about 200 nests this year, about 600 in 2025. We just dont know, do we?
According to study below, Undetected nests will send hawkers to apiaries in late summer - and could apparently be controlled by sealing hives up (losing main honey crop) and putting out protein bait dosed with fipronil. Poisoned bait will kill flyers and open brood, not eggs or sealed brood, so results in drop of flyers for 2 weeks, giving bee colonies a respite. As said earlier, I would feel fipronil should be administered only by trained members of local associations, not individually and in ‘custard ‘ form so that it is short lived. If that is right, then surely training needs to start now, not when hawkers appear in July?
This scientific study has examined how fipronil works. Too difficult for un-scientific me to take in. Suggests use of fipronil should be controlled by local authorities. Comments, anyone?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10339917/

 

[fian]

Thanks for this clarification.
As I now understand, for rechecking before I pass on to my association members:
Nest detection by NBU and total killing by injection of an insecticide wand is best as ensures total destruction.
But detection takes time and NBU has only a limited number of inspectors (?).
The number of nests requiring detection in 2024 is unknown(?). If all nests were detected in 2023, then nil until more queens blow in from France or are ferried in. Nests increased from 20+ to 70+ from 2022 to 2023 - threefold - if that rate of increase continues then expect about 200 nests this year, about 600 in 2025. We just dont know, do we?
According to study below, Undetected nests will send hawkers to apiaries in late summer - and could apparently be controlled by sealing hives up (losing main honey crop) and putting out protein bait dosed with fipronil. Poisoned bait will kill flyers and open brood, not eggs or sealed brood, so results in drop of flyers for 2 weeks, giving bee colonies a respite. As said earlier, I would feel fipronil should be administered only by trained members of local associations, not individually and in ‘custard ‘ form so that it is short lived. If that is right, then surely training needs to start now, not when hawkers appear in July?
This scientific study has examined how fipronil works. Too difficult for un-scientific me to take in. Suggests use of fipronil should be controlled by local authorities. Comments, anyone?

I would expect a figure closer to 200 than 0. It is better to form new detection and withdrawal groups than to play against time and eventually queens and drones develop that aggravate the situation in 2025.

 

[Amaranth]

If it did eventually come down to using fipronil, the point of the custard painted on to the thorax is that the carrier hornets do not ingest the poison, therefore they successfully manage to return to the nest. The custard is then groomed from them by others in the nest, and spread around, so that the queen will also die, if enough is taken back in and well distributed. The colony is then doomed from a reproduction point of view. Setting bait with fipronil to ingest will have the adverse effect of killing many other visiting insects - including honey bees. Although the commercially available baits are carefully designed not to be attractive to bees, sometimes bees will suddenly start visiting it in large numbers. This may relate to availability of water/ forage, but can be unpredictable.

 

[Amaranth]

The link given by Mintbee on Tuesday, to the tutorial on making bait stations, is now out of date and Colin has yet to update the AHAT.org.uk website. He now uses a quicker method of drilling the hole, using a conical drill bit (a step drill). These were recently available in Lidl for £4.99 for a set of 3.

 

[rdartington]

If it did eventually come down to using fipronil, the point of the custard painted on to the thorax is that the carrier hornets do not ingest the poison, therefore they successfully manage to return to the nest. The custard is then groomed from them by others in the nest, and spread around, so that the queen will also die, if enough is taken back in and well distributed. The colony is then doomed from a reproduction point of view. Setting bait with fipronil to ingest will have the adverse effect of killing many other visiting insects - including honey bees. Although the commercially available baits are carefully designed not to be attractive to bees, sometimes bees will suddenly start visiting it in large numbers. This may relate to availability of water/ forage, but can be unpredictable.

No, bees will not take in bail with fipronil as the bait is meat or fish - attractive to hornets but not insects seeking sweets, like bees.
Bees should always have access to clean water - or water with a bit of cow dung for added flavour.

 

[Amaranth]

Yes that’s a good point, you could use a protein bait to keep bees away from it. But bait for ingestion would still kill European hornets and wasps, and it wouldn’t achieve the aim of killing the queen, as the custard would.

 

[user 819]

Meat baits baited with fipronil is a non starter and would also attract non target species . Hornets aren't regurgitators so not effect except for killing the victim ingesting it.
Also as said we are far from practising with filpronil at this moment in time.

 

[North End Bees]

Hornets aren't regurgitators so not effect except for killing the victim ingesting it.

Regurgitation is irrelevant really. They carry food for larvae back to the nest in their mandibles. The problem is they'd be dead before they made it home.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Meat baits baited with fipronil is a non starter and would also attract non target species

And that's what the hard of thinking really struggle to grasp - whether it's fipronil or kill traps

 

[Dodge]

As a side comment. Just read the recent BBKA magazine and there is a mention of Fipronil poluting watercourses. Hadn't realised that Fipronil is the main ingredient in some / most Cat and Dog Flea treatments.

 

[Moobee]

As a side comment. Just read the recent BBKA magazine and there is a mention of Fipronil poluting watercourses. Hadn't realised that Fipronil is the main ingredient in some / most Cat and Dog Flea treatments.

Fipronil is in one of the most popular dog and cat flea treatments with which owners are encouraged to dose their animals with on a regular basis, even getting calls from the vet to make sure they have bought enough medication. I bloody hate the stuff and the idea of continually dosing my dog for no apparent reason aside from giving the vet a good retirement pot. Plus being a spaniel , she throws herself into water at every opportunity. Ditto worming tablets, she only gets those if she gets worms (which so far touch wood, is none in the last 12 months).
The UK has an estimated 12 million dogs and 11 million cats. If only a quarter of these are being dosed regularly with a fipronil based treatment for these invisible fleas and ticks, I think a relatively small amount of FP to control hornets is the least of our worries.

 

[Karol]

No, bees will not take in bail with fipronil as the bait is meat or fish - attractive to hornets but not insects seeking sweets, like bees.
Bees should always have access to clean water - or water with a bit of cow dung for added flavour.

Fipronil laced protein is a static bait devoid of human agency and completely and utterly ecologically irresponsible to the point of being environmentally criminal. Not only will it kill not target insects, it will kill birds and mammals as well. Such use of fipronil is reprehensible.

FC requires 100% human agency meaning that it is highly specific and highly targetted. There is no blind spinning of a roulette wheel. It has been formulated specifically as a trophallaxis trojan. The fact that it degrades rapidly is a welcome plus. It's not a justification to use it as a substitute to lace protein. That would still be reprehensible for lack of human agency.

I don't share your pessimism of velutina numbers exploding in the UK. Why? Because we have a wide variety of vespine species none of which have evolved into the velutina 'configuration'. By that I mean that if velutina can be sustained in the UK then indigenous vespines would have already filled that niche but they haven't. Velutina is a large vespine of circa 5000 adults per nest. Our native crabro is size wise comparable to velutina but nest sizes max out at 400 adults and crabro is confined geographically to conducive parts of the country, typically what I call scrumpy country - orchards with high wasp populations. Germanica and vulgaris compete population wise with velutina, circa 5000 adults, but they are physically a third of the size. Simply put, velutina cannot get enough energy from UK ecology to sustain itself. There is one caveat however. This assumes that beekeepers in their ignorance don't destroy indigenous vespine populations thereby removing competition for energy resources. For example by using fipronil laced protein or using spring trapping of queens.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

There is one caveat however. This assumes that beekeepers in their ignorance don't destroy indigenous vespine populations thereby removing competition for energy resources. For example by using fipronil laced protein or using spring trapping of queens.

I can hear the BBKA and their acolytes shouting 'hold my beer' from here

 

[Karol]

Meat baits baited with fipronil is a non starter and would also attract non target species . Hornets aren't regurgitators

I suggest you have this wrong. All vespines including hornets share carbohydrates via trophallaxis.

so not effect except for killing the victim ingesting it.

When fipronil is ingested it will kill however, the time to kill will vary based on the formulation. Provided this includes carbohydrates and 'bound' fipronil there is a window of opportunity for sharing the fipronil via trophallaxis. The reason why FC works is because the chosen vector doesn't get to ingest the fipronil but carries it back to the nest for sentries to preen, ingest and share for as long as it takes for the fipronil to take effect.

Also as said we are far from practising with filpronil at this moment in time.

And rightly so and long may it remain that way.

 

[user 819]

Another reason why I can't for one actually reason why beeks and the general population put out liquid wasp traps killing tens of thousands each year and non target species, they are part of our ecology and are vital sources in the food chain.

 

[Karol]

I can hear the BBKA and their acolytes shouting 'hold my beer' from here

Hypocrites. More respect if they shouted 'hold my mead!'

 

[Karol]

Another reason why I can't for one actually reason why beeks and the general population put out liquid wasp traps killing tens of thousands each year and non target species, they are part of our ecology and are vital sources in the food chain.

There is a place for high efficiency wasp traps which do the job but do so without killing vast numbers of wasps and without attracting non target beneficial species. But this is another area that requires knowledge and experience.